1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal. More particularly the present invention relates to a portable terminal having a hard disk.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, the term “portable terminals” refers to devices which provide a wireless communication function between users or between a user and a service provider via a mobile communication base station, for example. The portable terminals provide users with various types of content such as mobile banking, watching TV, on-line games, and Video-on-Demand (VoD), as well as voice communication services and short message transmission.
Such portable terminals are classified according to their appearance into bar-type terminals having a single housing with communication circuits and inputting/outputting devices (e.g. a transmitter and a receiver) placed thereon, flip-type terminals having a flip cover installed on a bar-type housing, and folder-type terminals having a pair of housings adapted to rotate so as to be opened/closed and having inputting/outputting devices distributed on respective housings. Sliding-type terminals have recently appeared and have improved portability and user convenience together with folder-type terminals. As such, an effort to satisfy various tastes of users is ongoing.
Mobile communication services provided to portable terminals based on on-line connection have been diversified and now include items such as games, transmission of moving picture files, mobile banking, VoD, and Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB). Such diversification of the mobile communication services is enabled by environments in which the portable terminals are widely used, user demands have been diversified, and various contents have been provided by using portable terminals.
Along with such diversified mobile communication services (e.g. DMB), demands for storing a large amount of information (e.g. MP3-type music files, moving picture files of various codec types, etc.) in the portable terminal have been increased.
Flash memories and hard disks have been used as information storage media. Although the flash memories are advantageously applied to portable terminals with the merit of compactness, high prices make it difficult to mount them as large-capacity memories. On the other hand, in the case of the hard disks, they are more disadvantageous for compactness of portable terminals than the flash memories. Despite that, since they can be mounted as large-capacity memories at advantageous prices, the hard disks have mainly been mounted on the portable terminals demanding a memory of at least 1 GB.
FIG. 1 is a sectional view of a conventional portable terminal 100 having a hard disk 102 installed. As shown in FIG. 1, the hard disk 102 is received in a housing 101 of the terminal 100 and has at least one surface screened from external environments by a shield member 119 so as to protect the hard disk 102 from external electromagnetic fields.
Conventional portable terminals equipped with a hard disk have a space of about 0.5 mm secured between the hard disk and the inner peripheral surface of the housing of the terminals so that, when an external impact acts on the portable terminals, the external impact is not transmitted to the hard disk. As shown in FIG. 1, in the space d4 having a height of about 5.75 mm, a hard disk 102 is installed so that one surface of a body 121 thereof and a motor 123 thereon have a distance d1, d2 of about 0.5 mm from the inner peripheral surface of the housing 101 of the terminal 100 and the shield member 119, respectively. The motor 123 protrudes about 1.06 mm from the other surface of the body 121 of the hard disk. The motor 123 of such a height d3 occupies an unnecessarily large space between the other surface of the body 121 of the hard disk and the shield member 119 in which other components may otherwise be installed.
Therefore, the fact that the motor of the hard disk occupies such an unnecessarily large space adversely affects the compactness of the terminal, to say nothing of mounting the hard disk itself.
In addition, since sufficient space fails to be secured between one surface of the body of the hard disk and the inner peripheral surface of the housing or between the motor and the shield member, there is concern that an external impact may directly act on the hard disk.